Cross Campus: 11.29.12

Suck it, Harvard. Yale’s record-breaking delegation of seven Rhodes scholars will be joined by one more student: Ela Naegele ’13, a German international student who won an international Rhodes scholarship from Germany. Naegele hopes to study modern British and European history with a focus on international law at Oxford.

Professor Gaddis, tear down this wall! The Pundits, Yale Precision Marching Band and Yale Russian Chorus joined forces yesterday to prank professor John Gaddis during his “Cold War” class. One student dressed as President Ronald Reagan delivered Reagan’s famous speech at Brandenburg Gate, while another dressed as Mikhail Gorbachev gave a grandiose speech in Russian. When a U.S. Air Force pilot impersonator shouted for an air drop, silver packets of Alpha Delta Pizza chips rained down to feed the hungry masses below.

Do you sing? Dez Duron ’14 does. The Yale football player and teenage heartthrob was eliminated from the popular NBC singing show “The Voice” last night, much to the dismay of his thousands of fans and coach Christina Aguilera. But it’s okay. Duron still has more than 60,000 fans on Facebook, 11,000 followers on Twitter and hundreds of marriage proposals.

The saga continues. Students in professor A. Douglas Stone’s PHYS 420 course were treated to a familiar surprise yesterday when they walked in to find a series of chalk images related to Nintendo 64 characters drawn on the board. The first panel read “Your princess is in another castle,” a nod to an identical chalk message that appeared in class last August, while the second panel featured a tableau of Koopas titled “Grand Koopanonical Ensemble,” a reference to physics material covered in the course. The third seemed to picture Contour Dude, a character from “Super Mario Brothers.” Science rocks.

Sending a message. Believe in People, New Haven’s famous underground graffiti artist, has struck again, this time commenting on Yale-NUS by painting two orange signs in Yale’s steam tunnels. Both signs read “Under Construction: Yale-N.U.S.T.,” though each sign has an additional message: The first says “Going Lower Than Ever Before” while the other says “Freedom of Speech Guaranteed.”

Success on the field. Yale running back Tyler Varga ’15 has been awarded first team All-New England honors. Varga ended the season with 935 yards for the Bulldogs.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY1961 The Admissions Office announces that it will notify applicants of admission decisions by late April.